organizing anarchic material into engag- ing plots; she even identifies in their work a vaguely Stooge-like response to women. "In the Farrelly universe, there's a woman present, but she's always sort of alien," she said, citing the characters played by Cameron Diaz, in "There's Something About Mary;" and Gwyneth Paltrow, in "Shallow Hal." "That's also the Stooges: a vrorld in which women aren't really necessary: The boys function happily to- gether; they share a giant bed. Women come along now and then, but it's a world of friendship and bonding, where emotional needs and physical needs are met by the male communit)T." Stooges fans outside the academy are more wary: Earl Benjamin receives mes- sages every week advising against the project, and a recent discussion on three- stooges.net, a fan "Web site, was filled with disapproval. "What I've always feared is this film will be no more than a pas- tiche of familiar ( to us anyways) Stoogian scenes, without the inspiration that the Stooges could bring to fairly ordinary plot elements, wIth gross-out humor added to 'update' the comedy/' wrote one contributor, adding that he doubted that the Farrellys could equal the original trio's "unique combination of vaudeville sensibilit)r, sight gags, oddball satire, and h " utter may em. " H ' . d " h e ere s an 1 ea, anot er tan wrote, facetiously: "How about getting Moe Howard, Larry Fine, and Curly Howard to play. . . Moe, Larry, and Curly? If they can't get those actors (and nobody else) to play the parts, then they should pack it in." Another wrote, "I don't care if you get John Gielgud, Ian McKellen, and Ben Kingsley to play the Stooges: the movie will suck." E arl Benjamin thought of the Far- rellys as the "kings of physical com- edy"-but they had not made slapstick of a kind that the Stooges would recognize. Their films had Stooge-like moments, including the snowball thrown into a woman's face in "Dumb &Dumber" (the scene became funny to test-screening audiences only after the F arrellys added, at the moment of contact, the sound ef- fect of Hank Aaron hitting a home run); and the Farrellys did share with the . , :,. ";":) :;- ", ",, :1 {J.';{;.'" b n' - , ?' ;0 D'1J' t:S tJ. 0 0 :f] D n . nÐ n 'q:O Dðt-tNeLL Y \\(( L\ -- . . . ." .";:"".." . "n" . '51ren't we supposed to feed them ?" Stooges a willingness to keep a gag going longer than an audience expected-re- discovering the laugh with a postscripted, after-the-calm hit (or, in the case of a fa- mous scene in "Dumb &Dumber," shit). But, as Bobby told me, "Ours isn't slap- ping comedy; it's sight-gag comedy"-a distinction reinforced by "There's Some- thing About Mary," which has made three hundred and sixty-five million dol- lars since its release, in 1998, and is best known for the scenes involving Ben Still- er's genitals being caught in a zipper, and semen mistaken for hair gel by Cam- eron Diaz. The Farrellys sat down with Mike Cerrone in January; 2002, in a rented house in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, to write a first draft of the script. The chal- lenge was evident. "How the hell do you maintain a movie that's a slap fest for an hour and a h without losing the audi- ence?" Peter recently asked. ' d how do you make the audience give a shit in the last fifteen minutes, if it's the Stooges? You've got to care, even if it's just a little. 'Dumb & Dumber' was slapstick, a lot of set pieces, but you gave a shit. Ulti- matel you wanted to know what hap- pened with Jim Carrey and that girl- even if only just a little." For all their moments of unblinking obscenit)r, the Farrellys are traditional filmmakers, who seem to have tricked a generation of young men into enjoying romantic com- edies. Although the R-rated "Me, My- self &Irene" (2000) had scenes-such as one in which Jim Carrey sucked a wom- an's lactating breast-that Chris Weitz, the co-director of ' erican Pie," found "as disturbing as any crazy European art film," the Farrellys had by 2002 begun what they half-seriously call their "sweet trilo " These PG-13-rated romances took on subjects that seem at first too delicate to be handled by the Farrellys (obesity; conjoined twins, and-in their recently finished film, "The Ringer"- the Special Olympics). Yet the protago- nists follow arcs of self-improvement, and the movies promote themes of equal- ity and decency: The Three Stooges, of course, never saw an arc in their lives. "They're cartoon guys, they're bulletproof-you hit them and they don't really hurt," Bobby said. Movies are about advancement, and yet th Stooges never advance. (A "Sein- feld" episode once traded on this idea, by